Recent Episodes

As friends and collegues were kidnapped and killed, Kelly McEvers continued to report for NPR in the Middle East during the Arab uprisings. She has made a documentary about a year there, and speaks with guest host Sean Cole.

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Cindy Storer, one of the CIA analysts who tracked Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda before Sept. 11, talks about the reported chatter of terrorist attacks at U.S. embassies and the world of intelligence gathering. Also in this show: as a young black Haitian-American, Constantin Severe had enough run-ins with the police to be wary of them. But when he grew up to become a public defender, he learned to trust officers.

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When Lynn Hill retired from operating Predator drones for the U.S. Air Force, she closed that chapter of her life – until she started writing poetry about having one foot in the war and one foot at home. Also in this show: a Vietnam veteran turned Franciscan friar talks about war and the long journey of finding a place to work and feel at ease.

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Susie Ray, a painter in London, recently opened a gallery where she displays her original copies – copies she’s made of Monet, Degas and others that are so close to the original, they’ve fooled art auction firms. Also in this show: performance artist Sara Juli handed out her life savings to an audience. They could give the cash back or walk out with it; Kate McGuire was driving home one day when she looked away from the road to her GPS unit. She didn’t see she was driving toward a parked car and a man standing beside it; and 30 years after the assassination of Benigno Aquino, one of the most prominent opponents of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Aquino's brother-in-law tells the story of what happened the day he was killed.

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On a good surfers’ beach, usually everyone is in the water. But at 38th Parallel Beach – near the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea – surfers sometimes see parades with tanks, soldiers and guns. Also in this show: contributor Scott Carrier goes to Hawaii to learn how to surf and test his theory that the music he associates with surfing is the true surf music; and when Matt Brooks and his wife Pam bought an 80-year-old wooden yacht named Dorade, people thought it was crazy they wanted to race it in weeks-long oceanic races. That was until it started winning.

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Andrew Marantz, who traveled to India to work at a call center, details the reaction he got when he showed up, the accent workers are encouraged to use, and the classes offered to work there. Also in this show: When illustrator James Gulliver Hancock moved to New York City in 2009, he started to get familiar with the city by illustrating its buildings. He has compiled his sketches in the book, “All the Buildings in New York.”